NOTE: I'm very sorry that this article is not properly spaced. I am not sure why it looks so odd; I tried everything short of doing a complete re-write. Please excuse this rather strange-looking post.
Friday April 1, 2011 - A new work entitled TABLE by Miro Magloire, set to a complex violin solo composed by Brian Ferneyhough and played by Erik Carlson was the centerpiece of this evening's performance by New Chamber Ballet at the City Center Studio.
All photos by Kokyat.
Overnight following the end of the dress rehearsal late Thursday evening (where Kokyat took these photos), one of Miro's dancers fell ill so most of the day on Friday was spent teaching the ballets to other dancers. Lauren Toole stepped into the premiere of TABLE and a very fine dancer Sarah Atkins (now working with MORPHOSES) helped save the day by mastering a role in NIGHT MUSIC - in which she is both dancer and musician - in just a few hours of rehearsal.
Miro's SCULPTURE GARDEN to music of Handel opened the evening with wonderfully vivid playing by Erik Carlson and pianist Steven Beck. Designer Candice Thompson's deep-hued tunics give this work an Isadora Duncan feeling. Dancers Victoria North and Alexandra Blacker move beautifully thru Miro's classically lovely combinations, dancing together or in solo passages. One movement of the piece finds the girls seated on the floor, using upper body and port de bras in an expressive duet. Interestingly, where one might expect a brilliant allegro finale, SCULPTURE GARDEN ends more reflectively in recitative as the dancers slowly depart.
In NIGHT MUSIC, the dancers themselves provide the music with the use of claves, Above, dancers Katie Gibson and Lauren Toole face off. Throughout the work, the three dancers (Katie, Lauren and Sarah Atkins) interact with one another both in motion and in music, using the rhythms and the varied force of their playing of the claves to annoy, intimidate, subdue and awaken each other.
Katie Gibson in a solo from TABLE. This work begins with violinist Erik Carlson seated at the head of the table , dancers Lauren Toole and Katie Gibson facing one another. As Erik launches into the complexities of the Brian Ferneyhough score (Unsichtbare Farben, in its US premiere), the girls stare at one another in a state of intense concentration. Are they sisters? Rivals? Mental patients? We cannot be sure. Periodically one of them rises to dance in rather jagged phrases; then they dance together but always return to the table.
As TABLE draws to a conclusion, one of the women seems to have gotten the upper hand. Lauren and Katie maintained an intense atmosphere throughout this work which has an air of borderline dementia about it. At the dress rehearsal I was able to take a look at the Ferneyhough score and could only marvel at the complete command with which Erik Carlson conveyed all the intricacies of the music, including some passages of incredible subtlety where notes are barely touch upon.
Above: Victoria North, a nymph remembering; guest choreographer Constantine Baecher provided the final work of the evening, SKETCHES OF A WOMAN REMEMBERING, set to preludes by Debussy which were evocatively played by Steven Beck. In this ballet, the choreographer conjures up The Nymph from Nijinsky's AFTERNOON OF A FAUN. Many years after her encounter with the exotic Faun, the Nymph - in three separate incarnations - recalls the incident and wonders what might have happened had she succumbed to the Faun's desires.
Alexandra Blacker's solo is expansive and lyrical, imagining the ecstacy that might have been...
...and at one point her rapture almost seems suicidal.
Victoria North's recollection is more agitated and highly strung; she trembles at the memory of the Faun's advances, her dancing unsettled and filled with regret.
Lauren Toole's concluding solo is a ritual of mourning, widow-like in its air of resignation and acceptance.
Lauren Toole, above. In each solo, the scarf serves as a link between the old FAUN ballet and this new work so full of perfumed images. It would be interesting to see the two pieces on a double-bill.
New Chamber Ballet will conclude their current season on June 24th and 25th at City Center Studio. Prior to that, they appear in an evening of dances set to solo violin music on May 12th at the Center for Performance Research in Brooklyn.
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